The Darkspawn Chronicles
by Hahren Hatana
Summary: "He had never felt a breeze before, only the meaty breaths and puffs of his brothers. This was different – though the caverns were ancient and musty, the bright-eyed spawn thought that this breeze smelled pleasant." - The story of Karhk, the bright-eyed Darkspawn.
1. The Darkspawn Chronicles, i

**The Darkspawn Chronicles, i.**  
**In the absence of light, shadows thrive  
_-Threnodies 8:21_**

It is crowded in the darkness, and he can feel his litter-mates kicking and elbowing him to try and carve out more room for themselves. They've little time left to wait in the womb. Soon they will all crawl free from their mother; soon the gnawing hunger inside of them might be satiated. It is this shared thought and seething desire that keeps the brood restless and writhing through the final days of their gestation, providing their aching mother with no rest as their resentment of one another and their containment grows stronger with each creeping hour. They are hungry – it is cramped inside of their mother.

When she finally bears them into the Deep Roads, they are all too eager for it – pushing and shoving and wrestling with one another to gain freedom first. They spill out of her, scrambling to the nearest sac of corrupted flesh along the walls of their nursery to feed. He is born alongside twenty-two others; only three are trampled in the initial frenzy to get to their food. This leaves nineteen young Hurlocks. It is a small litter, but the one-armed Broodmother is pleased with her spawn; she can tell that some among them have great potential.

It is why she only grows small broods – her malice and designs sink more deeply into her spawn, and those that emerge exhibit a rare sort of viciousness… and perhaps more frighteningly, an intelligence that surpassed that of their peers and the spawn of other Broodmothers. It is how she managed to claim such a wonderful nursery to bear her broods in; she pit her young and her makers against that of the other mother, and each day inched her way closer to the prime nesting grounds. The one-armed Broodmother might have lost her limb during her conquest, but it was a worthy sacrifice for the nursery. Her children and her creators helped her settle in, and they prepared flesh sacs on the walls – often using the pre-chewed remains of the previous broodmother and her offspring to fill them. They saw her fed and cared for, and now she had birthed them siblings to grow their tribe.

It was her thanks for such a wonderful nest, and for their diligent work in caring for her and trying to find the source of that distant, beautiful melody that hummed through the earth of the Deep Roads.

One of her brood, smaller than the rest but with eyes that glittered in the darkness, took his time traveling through the edible muck of their playroom. He eyed the bodies of his trampled litter-mates, seeming to consider their fates for several moments as his gaze crawled its way up to the others of his litter. They were hissing and spitting at one another – shoving and issuing undeveloped roars that would later strike terrible fear into all who opposed them… if they survived their adolescence.

A large brute among his siblings suddenly turned to his neighbor and bit off a hunk of his sibling's cheek, spitting it back at him as he shrieked in rage at his space being encroached upon. One of their siblings shrank back at this, but their display of submission seemed to only spur on the brute's aggressions, and he quickly charged the uninvolved party – earning his first kill less than ten minutes free from his mother's womb.

The sound that their mother makes is like a terrible shrieking-spit; while it pleases her to see some of her brood distinguishing themselves, she can't help but feel hatred at the demise of any of her children. With wrinkled lips snarling back, the one-armed broodmother turns her gaze away from the scene and shifts in her nest of flesh and muck. Her hatred and grief will grow the next litter – it will be an endless cycle for her; she will mother hundreds, if not thousands, of darkspawn in her lifetime.

The bright-eyed spawn tilts his head at this scene, a primal feeling settling in his pitted flesh as his eyes narrow. He can feel his brother's malicious intent pulsing inside of his mind like so many waves crashing against coastlines he has never seen, and his mother's mixture of emotions makes his flesh prickle uneasily. While not telepathic creatures –barely sapient, at that—the Darkspawn's hivemind made rudimentary communication possible through the sharing of instinct and intent. The brute is one that he will avoid, he decides, and rather than trying to find a place among the sacs at the wall, the bright-eyed spawn stoops near one of his mother's many tentacles and picks fleshy bits off of the ground around her. Overhead, he hears his mother let out a keening whine that would have sounded truly wretched to any but the darkspawn.

The bright-eyed spawn doesn't know what 'cunning' is, only that he must be it to survive his days in the nursery. As his siblings continue to squabble and fight for the best places around the sacs, the bright-eyed spawn eats more than his share from puddles and piles of gore left untouched and largely unnoticed by the rest of his litter. He decides that this will be how he gets his fill… at least until there is no more left on the ground for him to eat.

By the end of the brood's first day and night, fifteen of them remain… the bright-eyed spawn and the brute among their number. The bodies of their brothers lie strewn across the nursery floor. With fewer mouths to feed, what remains of the brood can feast rather than simply eat, and they grow head and shoulders larger than their tribe's nearest neighbors of similar age. Older spawn of their tribe come and go – delivering food to their mother and observing their newest brothers with stolen glances from lidless eyes. They are curious and wonder when their new brothers might leave the nest and join their warbands.

By the fourth day, their incessant feasting has accomplished what none of them seemed to have considered was a possibility… there was no more food for them. The fighting that broke out after this revelation saw their number reduced first to seven, and then promptly to five. The next time one of their elder brothers made his way down to the nursery with a meal for their mother, four of the remaining siblings clamored over to him and begged with shrill shrieks and snaps of lipless mouths to be the recipient of their older brother's delivery. Each of them, even the brute, were met with stern snarls – one of them was unlucky enough to catch a spiked boot to his chest that sent him sprawling backwards over one of their mother's tentacles. She was growing ever hungrier; it wouldn't be long before she needed the nest prepared for the next litter of spawn that she would bear into the world.

Before that could happen, she needed what remained of her current litter to go and join their brothers – something they seemed reluctant to do while they could still spend their time stuffing meat and gore into their mouths.

The one among her brood that didn't beg or plead for his meals was the bright-eyed one. He had ceased his search for scraps a day prior and merely observed with a curious glimmer in his eyes as the incessant gnawing in his stomach was steadily replaced by the sustaining burn of his blood. He discovered, long before his four litter-mates, that they did not actually need to eat. An understanding shown in his eyes as he watched his older brother clamber up to their mother's side, tearing chunks off of a bloodied haunch of some unknown and unidentifiable creature to feed her. She needed to eat – and perhaps they needed to after their birth, but they had peeled away the flesh of their adolescence and emerged looking largely like their elder brothers.

He knew, now, that it was time for them to leave the nest.


	2. The Darkspawn Chronicles, ii

**The Darkspawn Chronicles, ii.**  
**I shall embrace the Light. I shall weather the storm.**  
**I shall endure.**  
_**-Trials 1:10, vs 2-3**_

Their mother began to swat and swipe at them with muscled tentacles over the following days – their last spent within the nursery. She grew irritable and resentful of their presence, much as they had become resentful of the confinements of her womb during the latter stages of their gestation and her pregnancy. What they did not know was that she had started to grow the next batch of brothers for their bands; what they did know was that each passing day saw her less and less tolerant of their presence within the nursery. Their older brothers began to chortle knowingly and gutturally each time they delivered meals to their mother – they knew that soon the final straw would place itself upon the stack, and that their mother would send their younger brothers fleeing up through the tunnels and into the first of their encampments. From there, they would raise them to be one of their tribe; they would teach them to defend their mother and to ensure she was fed and that their territories were guarded ferociously. It was a time that they looked forward to, though they knew that their younger brothers would remember it poorly… much as they did of their own.

The bright-eyed spawn had quickly gotten the right idea when an irate swipe of his mother's tentacle crushed the head of one of the five remaining of her brood – he had begun to reside at the far reaches of the nursery, closer to one of the many exits of the playroom. He kept his distance from his mother, trying his best to understand the malevolent feelings that radiated out from her; why she hated them… why she loved them, still. The answers never came, and as her growls became more aggressive – he found his attentions shifting instead to the three brothers of his litter that remained. The brute, having picked up on the bright-eyed one's plans of survival, had made short work of bullying the other two siblings into the far reaches of the nursery. Occasionally, he would look to the bright-eyed one for direction, but never when the others might see it. He had come to find over the days of their infancy and adolescence that his smaller brother was very keen and clever; where he lacked ingenuity, his brother had it in boons… he was valuable, and despite being the runt of the litter, he had survived alongside the brute without aid. This one, he decided, was treasured – and he would keep him close.

Their first trip free of the nursery is marked by tentative steps following after the confident, booted march of their elder brother – departing from his latest feeding duty. They creep through the winding, rising tunnel, the small holes of their nostril-barren noses twitching and whistling as the four survivors of the brood took in the new scents that came to them on what wasn't quite a breeze. Worried, brittle _aaihcks_ and _grhhlnks_ issue forth from the bright-eyed and the brute's two siblings; neither put forth much effort in silencing the pair. Whatever awaits them in the caverns above their nursery, they will find out soon enough… There is no sense is bristling and setting their pitted flesh to prickling.

At the end of the tunnel, the brothers are greeted by the too-bright glow of a single torch that casts dancing and lashing flickers and shadows across the walls of the cavern beyond and the tunnel below. The bright-eyed spawn narrows his eyes along with his brothers, ducking his head down and shielding his gaze from the offending light source. They have never seen something so bright; their eyes burn and one among them whines pitifully as he finds no relief from the stinging sensation. The brute begins to roar in offense and indignation, stalking and stomping forward towards the light and the end of the tunnel. The bright-eyed one can sense his intentions; escape the tunnel and dash out the torch. He finds fault with only half of this plan – as he remembers a glow so dim within the nursery that it could barely constitute as light, and he knew that this must be it. Sensing his hesitation, the brute paused with a tremor to his frame, slowly turning a gaze mere shades away from murderous towards his smaller brother… but he listened.

The group rounded the final bend and, mercifully, the blazing light of the torch dimmed to something closer to tolerable. The cavern was large, able to have at one point comfortably hosted a small herd of brontos back before the fall of the dwarven empire and long prior to the beginning of the Divine Age… now, the one-armed broodmother's spawn and her makers called it home. Forges flared more of the offending firelight from beyond bends in the cavern, handfuls of their brothers gathered around fires and leaned close to one another; some small number snarled and gritted pointed teeth as they carved the latest accounts of their conquests into their flesh using intricate – if savage – markings that the four brothers did not yet know. It was not long before their presence was noted, and soon a chorus of primal hisses, growls, and hoots filled the cavern and began to echo through the pathways beyond and behind. Their elder brothers approached their youngest brothers; noting how one of the four cowered behind the other three, how one stood tall and bolder than the rest, how one had eyes that glittered like precious stones, and how the last looked to his more prominent brothers loyally.

As one of their number stepped forward to test the new brothers, the brute rose to the challenge with an open mawed roar, fists pounding once against his own chest as he hissed and spat and dared his elder to come closer to him – after all, he had killed so many, even within the confines of the nursery. Goaded on largely by the hype and hatred of his brothers, the challenger charged the brute and the two grappled and snapped and snarled at each other, tumbling through the cavern as their brothers parted for their bloody feud. The bright-eyed one shifted his gaze from one batch of his elders to the next; if the brute did not prove worthy, what might become of them? He had to succeed… by any means. His mottled heart pounded in his chest as he wrestled his way forward to observe the conflict. The brute had slashed off chunks and rivets of flesh from his elder, but he was at a disadvantage due to his lack of armor and arms. Luckily, he had sense enough to have disarmed his opponent early on. Both were bloodied and sparring the other no expense of violence… if either survived, it would be a miracle in and of itself.

This grim realization settles somewhere inside of the bright-eyed spawn. His lipless mouth wrinkles and he shakes his head, squawking out some sort of warning to his kin… but it fell on deaf ears. Desperation drives him forward, and before he knows what he's doing, the bright-eyed spawn issues a primal roar and a swipe of his clawed fingertips towards his feuding brothers, lacerating the elder and sparing the brute from what might have been a crippling blow. Energy flows from the gaping wounds of the elder into the brute… The elder crumples under unseen, blighted forces; the brute charges and tackles his form to the ground of their caverns, tearing into his flesh and howling with victory. As their band of brother howl and shriek with delight and issue their acceptance of their newest brothers, the sense of relief is short-lived for the bright-eyed spawn. Before he can gather his bearings and decipher what it was that just occurred and what part he might have played in it, a clawed, pitted hand with nails the color of granite settles upon his bare shoulder – bone chimes tinkling gently.

He had caught the attention of an older Emissary.


	3. The Darkspawn Chronicles, iii

**The Darkspawn Chronicles, iii.  
The brightest of their age,**  
**Were no longer men, but monsters  
****_-Threnodies 12:1 vs. 5-6_**

Their acceptance into the war-band was tenuous at best, and by the second day among their elders the most timid of their brothers was killed and eaten. The bright-eyed darkspawn found this curious – after all, surely those that came before them knew that eating was not necessary? He mulled over this minor misfortune to their litter until he caught sight of one of his elders vomiting into a familiar looking flesh sack. He understood, then, and a rumbled chortle of a hiss issued forth from his fanged jaws as he returned to the older Emissary that had taken him in. They were preparing meals for their younger brothers, and no amount of meat was wasted… not even the flesh of their kin.

A series of guttural clicks left him as he approached his elder to alert the older emissary of his presence, eying the tinkling bone charms his brother decorated himself with and trying his best to imagine what they might have come from. He has only ever seen the bloodied remains of whatever mutilated creatures were fed to their mother – after a few moments he merely frowns and shakes his head with a deep and dissatisfied hiss. He doesn't even know where to begin when trying to picture what his mother's meals and his brother's bone chimes might have once been. It hurts his head to try and makes him feel rather sour.

Seated at the glowing embers that remained of his fire, the elder emissary's eyes might have glittered with amusement at his younger brother's frustrations – if they hadn't been gouged from his skull some handful of years prior. As it was, he merely hacked out a laugh at his new apprentice's expense. Clapping one gnarled hand with nails the color of granite across the back of the bright-eyed spawn's neck, the elder emissary reached up with his free hand to clutch at a pendant he wore around his neck. Jerking the ties of the leather thong free, the blind brother presented his younger counterpart with the charm.

The bright-eyed hurlock's gaze flicked to the end of the necklace, eying several broad, flat teeth that looked more fit for grinding than tearing. Reaching out, he accepted this gift with a trilling hiss, eyes growing wide as he made short work of lashing it around his own neck. After several moments spent struggling to tie the ends of the stained leather thongs together with clumsy and unpracticed fingers, his elder brother took pity on him with an amused hiss and completed the task for him. Looking down at his formerly barren, pitted and mottled chest, the bright-eyed spawn felt some strange spark of pride at having been decorated by his mentor. There was something special about this charm; he couldn't hope to explain why, but it made him feel… stronger.

**"First… of… Many,"** his elder pointed to his new charm and speaks – though the bright-eyed hurlock doesn't yet recognize it as speech. To him, it is a collection of short, awkward, half-swallowed growls that seem to carry deeper meaning than their typical hisses, clicks, and snarls. Sensing his apprentice's furthered confusion, the older emissary issued a dismissive growl and pushed at his shoulder. It would not be long before the newest brothers of their band were expected to go on their first foray into the deeproads to hunt; it would be in his younger brother's best interest to find the rest of his brothers for their first hunt… it was not uncommon for a failed hunt to result in the oldest brothers of a hunting party to sacrifice and turn upon any isolated youngster of the group – all to avoid returning empty handed. Though the complexities of his older brother's worries were impossible to convey through traditional means, the bright-eyed spawn knew well enough that he was meant to go and find the brute when the blind emissary gestured in the approximate direction of where the hurlocks often sat to tattoo themselves.

Seated around the brightest of the fires – save for those of the forges concealed around the bend – was the brute and several other hulking brothers. Hacked cackles and humored growls sounded out regularly from around the fires as each of them took turns with an old scrap of metal to cut and carve the tales of their conquests and kills into their flesh. Though the youngest among them, the brute was surprisingly decorated already thanks to his prowess during their days in the nursery. Following the success of their initiation into the war-band, the brute hadn't struggled very hard to find a place for himself among his brothers… it helped that he was already a head and shoulders larger than some of even their elders – save for those that sat around the flames with him, chortling and snapping out barks of laughter.

The bright-eyed hurlock approached his litter-mate only to be welcomed by the snarls and squawked roars of the elder alphas around the fire. To his surprise, the brute rose to his feet and snapped at his elders. Thankfully, the four of them seemed more amused by his gall than offended by it. The growling continued until each had asserted themselves sufficiently, and then the four elders went back to their tattooing while the brute turned to the bright-eyed one, unable to hide his irritation. He trusted his smaller brother, but it seemed too great a risk to be irritating their elders before their place among the war-band had been truly solidified.

Thankfully, as though perhaps the blind emissary had predicted it, one of their elders climbed high atop a stone outcropping across the cavern and bellowed out a commanding roar – it was time for a hunt. As their elders rose and gathered beneath the one atop the outcropping, the bright-eyed spawn searched through the throngs of his brothers to try and locate the last of their litter-mates, to no avail. Doing his best to cram down his sense of dread – lest one of his elders pick up on it and view it as a sign of weakness – the bright-eyed spawn stuck close to the brute. When they were selected for one of the hunting parties, the bright-eyed spawn looked over his shoulder and back towards the fire that he shared with the older emissary… he wasn't there; nor was he among their brothers.


	4. The Darkspawn Chronicles, iv

**The Darkspawn Chronicles, iv.**  
**Taking first the weakest and frailest of hopes,**  
_**-Exaltations 1:7, vs 5**_

The ominous static in the air became something truly electric following the bellows announcing the hunting parties – the bright-eyed spawn and his brutish brother found themselves quickly swept up in a wave of movement and excitement, all filled with deadly purpose. It was something of an anxious march that brought them along behind their elder brothers to the forges; and it was their first visit to those horribly bright fires. The bright-eyed spawn felt his skin prickling as his eyes burned and stung from the intrusive, painful beams of firelight and nearly molten embers. If this was to be the worst part of their first hunt, he would count himself lucky… though some small, nagging piece of himself refused to allow him to believe this would be the case.

Hunched, mostly bald, fleshy humanoid figures crouched and hobbled between the forges. These ghouls and sorry excuses for what must have been humans in some distant age tended dutifully to the flames and forges – one among them more deformed and lopsided than the rest hammered away at slabs of armor for the bright-eyed spawn and his kin. Echoes of each ring and tang of his hammer filled the secluded section of the caverns their hunting party found themselves in; only the newest among them offered any flinches or squinting of their lidless eyes in response to the violent sparks unleashed by malformed hammer against crooked, tainted blades.

It wasn't bargaining that occurred between their elders and the ghouls – it was something more akin to barked and hissed orders, snapped threats and dark promises issued in guttural tones… not all of it was hostile in nature; in fact, most of their elders' tones seemed to border on protective and reassuring to their ghoulish servants and charges. The seconds and minutes were just beginning to prick at the bright-eyed spawn's neck when a couple of ghouls emerged from some hidden away cranny in the caverns with a set of wicked looking armor. It's edges on the chest plates were jagged and unforgiving; its shoulder guards bore deadly and hungry looking spikes forged from the angry remnants of metal. It was presented to his brother, the brute, and their elders wasted no time at all in strapping their youngest alpha into his armor. His own unique weapon might not have been ready yet, but what their elders perceived as being the most valuable of their younger brothers would not enter their hunting grounds without some measure of protection.

The bright-eyed spawn did not hear so much as he felt the urging of some hidden ghoul beyond the overreach of the crag… it tickled at the back of his mind like some unscratched itch, and soon his mottled feet turned in the direction of his mysterious benefactor, only to have peeling and wrinkled hands drape some sort of scarf about his neck from a hidden outcropping in the shadows. "He's – His Song… I-It's Closer, Now…" the ghoul gargled out, eyes flashing some distant reflection in the darkness before it crawled up into some unseen and unknown passageway – a distorted griffon reflection being the last that the bright-eyed spawn could discern of the mysterious being's chainmail tabard. He wasn't sure why, but the foreign cloth around his neck and shoulders made him feel… wiser. Absently, each of his hands rose up – one to grip the flat teeth of the pendant around his neck, and the other to inspect the texture of his new scarf. It was filthy and nearly crispy in places with muck and age, but with nothing to compare it to, the bright-eyed spawn thought that it must have been nice.

The amicable chortling among his elders gathered into a crescendo of eager growls and yowled howls – among their number, the brute turned his gaze to his littermate, dark, dim eyes pleading and seeking. The bright-eyed spawn found himself wishing, not for the last time, that he had the answers sought of him. As it was, the most he found himself capable of was tucking in close to his littermate; nestling in at the crook of the brute's armpit and trilling out what he hoped might have been a reassuring hiss to his brother. Around them those assigned to their patrol shouldered and nudged and shoved them into some sort of mockery of a formation to scout through their claimed tunnels in search of prey… the brute and the bright-eyed spawn had no choice but to comply, shuffling alongside their brethren.

Though he had only just grown used to the unnerving and often times painful glow of their main clearing, the bright-eyed spawn found it discomforting to venture beyond the light of their claimed caverns. At first, there were torches to light their path… then, rather abruptly…. Nothing.

Within a handful of forceful blinks—upper brow muscles contracting down over that of pitted cheeks—gritted teeth, and an enthusiastic shake of his head, the bright-eyed spawn found that his eyes adjusted rather quickly to the darkness that hung above their hunting party and enveloped them in a warm and foreign embrace. He reasoned, then, that the torches must have been for the benefit of the ghouls and their craft. The ground beneath his feet began to slope upwards in uneven intervals. Had their hunting party not been so close together in the tunnels, he might have stumbled and lost his footing more than once. As it was, the bright-eyed spawn merely found himself jostled and shoved forward into the back of one of his other brothers each time he lost step with the group. He was beginning to think that their trek through the blackened passageway might never end, but then up ahead a dim, not quite blue shimmer refracted off of the walls. The tunnel grew wider as they drew nearer to the strange new light source—one that was, so far, nowhere near as bright as the forges—and the bright-eyed spawn found that the brute kept near to him out of preference rather than necessity as their band of brothers picked their way out into a broad cavern with dilapidated, ancient pillars leaning haphazardly at what couldn't have possibly have been their intended angle. Massive webbing hung at the far end of what the bright-eyed spawn considered to be an impossibly tall cave ceiling – visible only thanks to the thin blue rivets that danced through the rockface.

He felt something odd across his flesh; his gaze turned itself in the direction of the tickling sensation. He had never felt a breeze before, only the meaty breaths and puffs of his brothers. This was different – though the caverns were ancient and musty, the bright-eyed spawn thought that this breeze smelled pleasant. He decided that he liked this feeling, and was pleased –almost happy—when their older brothers began to urge them in the direction of that sweet smelling wisp of cave air…

It was the only truly pleasant part of his first hunt.


End file.
